Gertrude Himmelfarb
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| Gertrude Himmelfarb | |
|---|---|
| Born | Gertrude Himmelfarb 8 August 1922 |
| Pen name | Bea Kristol |
| Nationality |  USA |
| Ethnicity | Jewish |
| Citizenship | USA |
| Spouse(s) | Irving Kristol |
Gertrude Himmelfarb (born August 8, 1922), also known as Bea Kristol, is an American historian who has written extensively on intellectual history, with a focus on the Victorian era, as well as on contemporary society and culture.
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[edit] Education
Born in Brooklyn, New York, she received her undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College in 1942 and her doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1950. She also studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and at Girton College, Cambridge University.[1]. In 1942, she married Irving Kristol, known as the "godfather" of neoconservatism, and has two children, Elizabeth Nelson and William Kristol, a political commentator and editor of The Weekly Standard. Her late brother, Milton Himmelfarb, was a prominent writer on Jewish subjects.
[edit] Current Position
Now Professor Emeritus at the Graduate School of the City University of New York, she is the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees. She has served on the Council of Scholars of the Library of Congress, the Council of Academic Advisors of the American Enterprise Institute, and the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1991 she delivered the Jefferson Lecture under the auspices of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 2004 she received the National Humanities Medal awarded by the President.[2]
[edit] Philosophy
Himmelfarb has argued "for the reintroduction of traditional values (she prefers the term “virtues”), such as shame, responsibility, chastity, and self-reliance, into American political life and policy-making", and has been "greatly involved in Jewish conservative intellectual circles."[3] In Britain her most outspoken admirer is Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister and head of the Labour Party, who frequently quotes her in his speeches and recommends her books[4]. His introduction to the British edition of her Roads to Modernity, in 2008, opens: "I have long admired Gertrude Himmelfarb's historical work, in particular her love of the history of ideas, and her work has stayed with me ever since I was a history student at Edinburgh University."
[edit] Works
- Lord Acton: A Study of Conscience and Politics (1952) OCLC 3011425
- Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959) OCLC 676436
- Victorian Minds (1968) OCLC 400777
- On Liberty and Liberalism: The Case of John Stuart Mill (1974) OCLC 805020
- The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (1984) OCLC 9646430
- Marriage and Morals Among the Victorians (1986) OCLC 12343389
- The New History and the Old (1987) OCLC 15107685
- Poverty and Compassion: The Moral Imagination of the Late Victorians (1991) OCLC 22488559
- On Looking into the Abyss: Untimely Thoughts on Culture and Society (1994) OCLC 28213630
- The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values (1995) OCLC 30474640
- One Nation, Two Cultures (1999) OCLC 40830208
- The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (2004) OCLC 53091118
- The Moral Imagination: From Edmund Burke to Lionel Trilling (2006) OCLC 61109330
- The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot (2009) OCLC 271080989
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/gertrude-himmelfarb-browns-guru-398800.html
- ^ http://www.ashbrook.org/events/lecture/1996/himmelfarb.html
- ^ Oz Frankel, "Gertrude Himmelfarb" in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia (retrieved June 30, 2009).
- ^ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/gertrude-himmelfarb-browns-guru-398800.html
